How to ship an AI mobile app fast with Expo

CineMe, developed by Kiril Kostev, is a mobile app that transforms a selfie into a cinematic AI-generated video in various genres like action and horror, designed for quick sharing on platforms like TikTok. The app's development was expedited using Expo, a React Native framework, enabling rapid iterations across iOS and Android without platform divergence, which was crucial given the tight timeline. The app employs an asynchronous pipeline where a Flask API handles image uploads and scene prompts before an AI model generates the video and returns it through a webhook. Users are kept informed of progress via client-side polling. Challenges included managing file uploads, implementing a robust async job pattern, ensuring reliable polling, and overcoming video playback issues. Despite missing the initial two-week target, CineMe was successfully launched in 36 days, demonstrating the value of rapid deployment and real-world user feedback for iterative improvement.